Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Cider...without Rosie

Having a dog is great, but it's nice to get a break from her sometimes demanding presence. It also means the cats have the run of the house once again.

Tonight I'm trying a couple of ciders for a forthcoming Sunday Express article, both from Waitrose and made by Herefordshire cidery (is that the right term?) Dunkertons. They're pretty good.

The first, Dunkertons Premium Organic Cider, is a yellow gold colour and has a lovely sweet nose that's slightly funky, in a nice way. It has a medium-sweet, broad palate with a lovely fruity, spicy acidic bite. Bursting with complex flavours.

The second is drier: Dunkertons Black Fox cider. It has open appley aromas and the palate is quite savoury and just off-dry. There's a bit of bite: it's a grown-up cider that would be great with food. Both are around the £1.80 mark, if I recall correctly, which makes them great value.

No disrespect to Magners (actually plenty of disrespect - I'm feeling generous)but I'm thinking that Magners is to cider what real ale is to keg lager. A curious feature of brand fixation was revealed when a friend of mine who owns a gastropub in London was asked for a Magners and ice. Not stocking the brand he said he could achieve the same or similar effect by adding ice to a glass of Bulmers. "No, I just want Magners", said the customer, "I'll have a cappuccino instead."

Having said that I see that one of the many new drinks of the summer is touted to be rose on the rocks. I can see it now: Iced Blossom Hill Crush Blush. Or a Mateus-atini cocktail, the prospect of which neither stirs nor shakes me. Harper's this week was falling over itself trying to predict what people would be quaffing over the next few months. Presumably, drinking habits are partly determined by the weather: I would hate to think that an advert saying that it is smart and cool to drink a particular cider is going to have such a massive influence again. Which just goes to show how wrong I will be!